We will never forgive Roy Hodgson for the debacle that was Euro 2016. This is a fact: the scars will never heal and we, the people, will never forgive. Over a year may have passed, but England’s Round of 16 defeat to Iceland still looms large over Hodgson as a manager, no matter how much he would like us to drop it, to move on, to eradicate our memories of that fateful day. While Hodgson may no longer have to field questions on the matter in his Crystal Palace press conferences, the legacy of the result remains in the form of snide asides, months of p*ss taking and a general sense of dismissiveness towards him.

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The thing is, the punditocracy may not be able to dismiss Roy Hodgson for much longer. Palace’s late win against Stoke on Saturday sets them up perfectly for a vital run of games, starting with the first M23 derby of the season on Tuesday evening.

Palace could have gone into the derby against Brighton on the back of consecutive wins were it not for a creative dive from Oumar Niasse, but two points dropped against Everton last weekend are long forgotten at this point. Palace looked like a functional side as they got only their second victory of the campaign against Stoke, with two of their most important players – Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Mamadou Sakho – getting on the scoresheet.

This is what Hodgson has built his career and reputation on: functionality. It may have produced lacklustre results during his time at Liverpool, but functional football is the bedrock on which his success with less storied clubs has been built.

While it’s hard not to see Hodgson’s England reign in the light of its ignominious ending, he got the top job with the national team because of his track record of overachieving with limited tools at his disposal. Not only did he take West Brom from the cusp of relegation to the relative comfort of the mid-table, he took a Fulham side featuring Chris Baird and Dickson Etuhu to the final of the Europa League.

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Sakho got the winner against Stoke City

It may not always be pretty, but Palace are beginning to look like a Hodgson team. Having conceded seven goals in their first four league games of the season under Frank de Boer and scored precisely none in reply, the Eagles have got on an even keel in their last four league matches, scoring and conceding six.

With Palace now facing five winnable games against Brighton, West Brom, Bournemouth, Leicester and Swansea – with a difficult fixture against Watford in between – Hodgson could be on the verge of rebuilding his reputation as a managerial firefighter with a knack for snuffing out relegation conflagrations. It may not be perfect, it may not be flashy, but Hodgson’s work with Palace could at least restore some of the pragmatic prowess which defined his management prior to Euro 2016.